Who would have thought that the once popular Flash which is still loved by many would slowly be phased out and replaced by HTML5 and other responsive ready frameworks? I share my perspective on why migrating relevant Flash courses is still worth the money.

The Best Practices Of Migrating Legacy Flash Courses

I still love Flash!

Don’t get me wrong. I still love Flash. I have seen extremely rich and interactive courses being developed in Flash over the years. However, the matter of the fact is that Adobe Flash has been dropped from all popular browsers and the support for Flash is going to be stopped completely from 2020 onwards. Currently, users need to activate Flash manually on browsers supporting Flash.

So, should organizations having their legacy courses with really good content be scrapped completely? Of course not.

Already, several organizations have migrated their legacy courses to HTML5, and as we read this article, some are migrating, while others are contemplating to migrate or rebuild the courses from scratch.

Your learning team may not have the resources or HTML5 skills to convert the courseware. This is a huge challenge to every organization who still has Flash courses in use. But you need not worry anymore!

What Can You Do To Address This Challenge?

I bet you are going to like this. If you have any legacy Flash courses still relevant to your learners, you have multiple options to consider for Flash to HTML5 migration as listed below.

1. Straightforward Migration

Migrate Flash courses to HTML5 compatible easily using services like MigrateEazy. You need to only have your Flash source files for this migration strategy. Your existing courses will look alike when they are migrated. They can work seamlessly on PC and Tablet post-migration.

2. Visual Enhancement And Migration

Enhance the visuals of the courses by revisiting the User Interface, key design elements and continue to use the Flash source files to migrate them with ease using services like MigrateEazy. Again, these migrated courses work on seamlessly on PC and Tablet.

3. Ground Up Approach

This approach can be used If your content is still relevant or content updates need to be made to meet the changing needs of the organization/learners. Accordingly, we can strategize to rebuild them using latest learning strategies. While doing this, you can consider having these courses be only compatible with PC or tablets or make it fully responsive to work on Smartphones too.

The first option is the most economical one followed by the second option. The third option requires additional planning, skillsets and time in identifying the right strategy and then you can carry out the development.

Is Migration An Easy Process?

Migrating legacy Flash to HTML5 is an easy process using services like MigrateEazy. These are highly flexible and agile solutions to migrate legacy eLearning courses easily for HTML5 delivery. Irrespective of the legacy authoring tool used for your course development, these solutions help you develop the HTML5 version of the course easily by mapping the right templates to your existing content without compromising on the required functionalities.

The repository of HTML5 templates ensures that the migration of your legacy content to HTML5 is a smooth process with aesthetically appealing learner experience, cost-effective designs and modern layouts.

Experience Of Migrating Courses

We have successfully migrated more than 730 courses so far. With this vast experience, our team of experienced instructional and usability specialists will work closely with your team to create cost-effective yet instructionally, visually, and functionally rich designs to meet your project requirements.

Be it a need for straightforward migration or visually enhancing them or do a ground-up approach, we will create a smooth journey for your team.

How Can They Be Impactful?

As Flash had innumerous features and possibilities, expectations have been to replicate the same in HTML5 too. Today, everyone is accepting what really is feasible in HTML5 compatible development tools.

However, if the source of the legacy course is in Flash, then we will be able to retain the same experience for the learner even after migration, this is possible for both straightforward migration and subtle visual enhancement. When a migration strategy is a ground-up approach, then we will need to factor for the authoring tool that is used before deciding on the experience it can offer to the learners.

A couple of examples of migrated courses are given below:

Example 1: This course, which was on a technology subject was still relevant when the decision to migrate it was taken. Hence, we had to only change the look and feel of the User Interface and retain all the visuals and text as is for the migration.

You can see the screens for before and after below:

Before Migration

After Migration

Example 2: The original course on Drug Discovery had a dated design but the content was quite relevant. Hence the content was slightly updated to meet the current trends. We took the course source files, modified the content and redesigned the course.

You can see the before and after below:

Before Migration

After Migration

Conclusion

At Tesseract Learning, we have helped numerous organizations in migrating legacy courses in Flash to HTML5 using varied strategies as explained above. If you have legacy Flash courses and wondering how to migrate the relevant courses, we can be of help to you.

Our design strategists are the right experts you can turn to for the migration solutions. To discuss how we can help migrate your Flash content to HTML5, do write to me at suresh@tesseractlearning.com.

Suresh is a learning professional with 14 years of experience in strategizing and providing learning solutions for varied customer requirements. He works with several global customers to understand their learning and training needs and propose optimal
learning solutions to enhance employees’ performance.